Yao Cheng

Background

About Yao Cheng

I'm a Computer Engineering major, and spent most of my graduate student life helping scientists solving their research problems. I have a lot of exposure to Machine Learning via several bioinformatics, image processing and natural language processing projects, but my true passion lies in building high-performance, user-friendly software systems with good design and efficient code. My first language is C and it's the inception of many things that I became interested in later. I was introduced to Object-Oriented Programming through Java, and was amazed by how it changed my view on programming. About a decade ago, I fell in love with Python at first sight, fascinated by its readability and expressiveness. And ever since, I've been honing my skills to become a Python ninja. For my first front-end development project, I built a Google Maps like image viewer using ActionScript and Flex. This project ignited my passion for Web Development and was the foundation of many applications I built later with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. I also read Perl and can write simple Shell script, but essentially I'd like to call myself an enthusiastic web developer who also loves Python. I believe good system starts with good design, which is usually intuitive - although not necessarily obvious. Thinking from both human and machine’s perspective helps me hash out workflow and process, as well as eliminate uncertainty. Once the design is there, readability leads the way of implementation; Unit testing helps me re-examine and make sure everything is decoupled properly. Besides programming, I'm drawn to mystery solving - in and out of Software Development realm. Good detective work is what intrigues me and makes me proud. So, what mystery do you have :)